


Swear to G-d

by Mosca



Category: Weeds
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jewish Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 11:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15640155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Andy Botwin sort of atones.





	Swear to G-d

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this to my Livejournal in 2005. I'm almost positive that it was part of my own Yom Kippur atonement process that year. 
> 
> The original content warnings for the story were "Really a whole lot of Jewish." There is also discussion of canon character death, and some behavior that is dubiously appropriate for shul. It takes place shortly after the season 1 finale and, remarkably, was not substantially jossed by subsequent canon.
> 
> Thank yous to Distraction and Sandyk for beta reading.

What it comes down to is, Andy is disrespectful of people. He is in the company of several hundred penitent Jews, beating their breasts as they dutifully recite the Hebrew list of things that the prayer book says that they've done wrong in the past year. They have lied, they have cheated, they have taken God's name in vain. (He thinks he should put a hyphen in place of the "o", even when the "o" is purely mental. At least, he should when he's at temple.) He has done all of these things, sometimes within a single act. But, he thinks, they're minor. They're isolated issues. What it comes down to is, he's disrespectful of people.

The problem is not the disrespect. This is California, and everyone's disrespectful here. It's ingrained in the culture. The problem is that people think he likes them; they think he respects them. They think he's a nice person. Flighty, unprincipled, lazy, whatever, but they think he's basically nice. A stray puppy, a sweet guy in need of a little saving. But they talk, and he daydreams. They have minor emotional crises, and he keeps searching for that pickle jar in the back of the fridge. He keeps his promises, but they are a day late and torn at the corner. He pretends to give a shit, but really, he's lying, he's cheating, he's taking G-d's name in vain. With the hyphen.

Shane elbows him, painfully. "You're supposed to sing," he whispers.

"I don't know the tune," Andy says. 

"Everybody knows the tune," Shane says. "The tune's the same everywhere."

"Well, it was different at the temple we went to when I was a kid," Andy says.

"Liar," Shane says. He elbows Andy, again painfully.

"I wouldn't lie to you," Andy says. "Not on the holiest of holy days."

"Shut up," Silas whispers. "It's disrespectful." And Andy thinks, thank you, Silas, for choosing the right word without knowing it. He wonders how a kid who's so good at choosing his words could have ended up with a deaf girlfriend. But the deaf girlfriend is hot, and the kid is in high school, and maybe that's all there is to it. It's only when you get to be Andy's age that there are deeper considerations. You're supposed to be wondering, by Andy's age, whether each girl is the one, and feeling dejected when she turns out not to be. Instead, Andy knows that none of them are marriage material, which is why he fucked them in the first place. He wonders when that will change; he wonders _if_ it will; he wonders if it's a bad thing that he doesn't want it to. 

He's too old for change, he thinks: too old already. He stands between these boys and feels positively elderly. The last time he went to temple – excepting Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals – he wasn't much older than Silas. His father made him go on High Holy Days until he graduated from high school, even when he protested that he'd been a man in the eyes of G-d since the age of thirteen. "In all those years I sent you to Hebrew School," his father said, "you didn't learn the part about honoring thy father and mother?"

Andy is pretty sure that he spent that day building projectile weapons out of ballpoint pens and little wads of challah.

He's only here because Nancy asked him to take the boys. She's not Jewish, herself – never converted – but when she married Judah, she agreed that they'd raise the boys Jewish. She thinks they should be raised _something_ , largely because she wasn't really raised anything, and she thinks it was unfair of her parents to leave her so rudderless. But she isn't Jewish and doesn't want to be, so she's busy at the "bakery" while Andy stands and sits and pretends to atone and daydreams about hyphens and challah rifles and the very luscious breasts of the very focused woman across the aisle. She is seriously atoning, and it is disrespectful to imagine her wearing nothing but her handmade feminist tallit and an expression of sincere repentance.

The sexy, serious woman catches him looking, and she furrows her brow at him. He smiles at her in lame apology. Disrespectful, he thinks; manipulative. He hangs his head. She smiles back, a tiny smile. They're all in this together. He's just realized that this is a thing he likes about being Jewish: Jews atone in public. You all get together in a poorly-lit sanctuary with uncomfortable chairs and terrible acoustics, so that you can spend the day admitting what shitty people you all are. You're all in this together, and it's just for a day, and everyone knows that they're not the only one planning to swing by Carl's Jr. when services end, long before the sun goes down.

A thing becomes clear to Andy, and that thing is that he would make one hell of a terrible rabbi. Here he is, in an atmosphere of genuine and holy atonement, fantasizing about cheeseburgers. He can't even scrape together enough Judaism to daydream about something Kosher.

If he weren't adequately convinced that G-d is plenty busy with the millions of repenting Jews, he would ask why the Army had to recall him now. He has finally found an occupation that suits him. And okay, that occupation is selling illegal drugs, but he's good at it. He's living rent-free with family members whose company he actually enjoys, when they are not elbowing him painfully. And he does enjoy his nephews, not just as genetic descendants, but as human beings. It's really easy to forget that babies grow up to be human beings. Weird ones, if they have Botwin genes. And oddly wise, with their heads bowed, yarmulkes perched on their round Botwin heads like satin pup tents. Shane is probably daydreaming about violence. Silas may actually be atoning. Andy finds both of these truths disturbing.

Out of the corner of his eye, Andy catches Shane preparing to elbow, and he dodges. Shane glares. "Burgers after?" he whispers.

"Obviously," Andy whispers back.

"Do we have to wait till sundown?" Shane whispers. 

"Not if you promise to lie to your mother," Andy says. The sexy serious woman from before looks over at them. Andy shrugs at her and nods down at Shane. Kids, they're restless, they don't really know how to feel guilty yet. He's making excuses, and that's disrespectful. He should own up to his own hunger, his own lack of stamina. 

He should pass that woman his phone number or let her go. She looks like marriage material: the kind who'd call her parents and tell them she met a Jewish guy. He seems nice, she'd say. Funny, sweet, the lost-puppy type. Her breasts would bounce like divine forgiveness when they welcomed the Shabbas bride up against a wall.

This is neither the place nor the time for an erection. Andy conjures the mental image of Doug shirtless until his dick settles down.

He had to go to fucking Agrestic to make friends. Nobody here is anything like him, and yet here is where he finds a guy that he can hang out and smoke with, a guy less disposable than ash or resin. When Judah first moved to the suburbs, Andy asked why anyone would want to live with all those fake plastic android pod people. Judah said that they were as real as anyone else. Andy thinks, maybe some of them. Maybe even the ones who refuse to stop being Republicans even though they know it's stupid.

Andy thinks, if he were to take a drug test right now, he'd fail. Considering how long weed stays in your system, there are very few occasions on which he will pass a drug test. As soon as he takes an Army physical, he will be dishonorably discharged. Normally, that would faze him somewhat, but if he's got a lucrative career in the controlled substances business ahead of him, there's no sense worrying about a little dishonorable discharge.

Andy thinks he misses Judah's habit of being right most of all. Andy thinks he misses Judah. Andy thinks this is why he's not in love with Nancy, despite the fact that she's beautiful, intelligent, single, and funny in that dark way that turns him on. He looks at his nephews, who actually look like his dead brother, and he sees Shane and Silas. But he looks at Nancy and he sees Judah, and he thinks she sees the same thing when she looks at him. It's hard to want a woman who makes him mourn every time he looks at her. He's not even up to admitting that he mourns. He's not close, will never be close, to admitting that he is terrified, that he wakes up every morning and shivers with relief. He's even thanked G-d once or twice, although he's pretty sure that, High Holy Days or otherwise, G-d has more important things to do than look through his thank you notes.

There is also the fact that Nancy loves him. When women love Andy, he loses interest. Even if it's not that kind of love, just the abiding familial love that keeps Nancy from throwing him out. It's the kind of love that inspires Nancy to send him to temple with his nephews because she once promised Judah she'd raise the boys Jewish, and it's even harder to break promises once people are dead. That's the kind of love you can't end-run or negotiate, and it completely cancels out sex. There's this thing in the Bible – on _that_ day, he must have run out of either ballpoint pens or challah wads – where you're supposed to marry your brother's wife if he dies, so that she's taken care of. It creeps Andy out that if he actually _were_ sleeping with Nancy, he'd be observing a holy commandment.

The rabbi is giving a sermon. The microphone keeps cutting out, and what does get through crackles and sags. It sounds like Rabbi: The Club Remix. Andy wishes he had some wads of challah. Shane would totally go for impromptu weapons construction. 

Actually, Andy wants a cheeseburger. A couple of cheeseburgers. Also, a very large soda and a side order of fried zucchini, with ranch dressing in a tub that is just too small to accommodate the girth of a slice of zucchini.

He elbows Shane; Shane winces. "Hey," he whispers. "Did your dad make you wait till sundown?"

"For what?" Shane says, rubbing his arm.

"Cheeseburgers," Andy says.

"Never," Silas whispers. "He never made us wait."

From beyond the grave, Judah has just deprived Andy of another chance to be the cool uncle. But then, Judah never really crossed the line into uncool. A couple of days after Silas was born, Andy and Judah smoked a bowl together, and Judah promised to never become that guy – that dad, that husband, that pod person. Judah was good enough to keep promises even to the living. He had a sense of respect, was what he had. It came to him as naturally as it doesn't come to Andy. 

A Botoxy woman with self-consciously blonde hair steps up to the microphone. She adjusts it, and it works perfectly. Andy kind of misses the club remix effect. She is the head of the temple board, and she is making announcements: children's service starts at one in the afternoon, join the B'nai Israel community at dusk for a simple break fast of challah and juice. Andy fears that the woman realizes that she is providing him with ammunition. A wad of challah dipped in watery Hebrew-school grape juice sticks to things like nobody's business.

He blows through an imaginary hollowed-out pen and aims imaginary challah bullets at the congregation. In particular, he aims them between the eyes of the Botoxy woman, and into the cleavage of the sexy serious woman across the aisle, who looks irritated and impatient. It's hard to atone thoroughly when some lady is chirping about the upcoming Sukkah-decorating contest.

He thinks about entering the Sukkah-decorating contest. He thinks about asking Sexy Serious Woman to help him. He thinks that sex in a Sukkah would be hot beyond his wildest imaginings.

The rabbi comes back to the microphone. Sexy Serious Woman sighs visibly. They're going to wrap things up: there will be a short yizkor service (the full-length one, for the really determined Jews, will take place in the afternoon), and they'll be free to go. "It's been a long morning for everyone," the rabbi says. "Yom Kippur is always a long morning. And it should be: keeping our promises to G-d should be neither short nor easy." When the technology is on his side, Andy thinks, this guy might be a really good rabbi. 

The rabbi lists the people whose yahrtzeits are this week. He lists the members of the congregation who are related to those people, and Andy can see some of them shift and look down when their names are called. Like the part of them that died when grandma finally kicked has risen to the surface. When the rabbi's gotten through his list, he says that he's also going to list congregation members who have died in the last year. He says it like that: "died," not "passed on" or anything. Andy is grateful for that. He waits to hear Judah's name with an almost happy anticipation. It will feel good to be included and acknowledged. "Judah Botwin," the rabbi says. Andy feels his ears sting.

The yizkor is an anticlimax after that. The rabbi gives a speech about the Holocaust, and how it is their responsibility to never let such a thing happen again. All Andy can think is, talking about things like that makes it harder for the people who are just trying to mourn one person.

But before he can get too annoyed, the yizkor is over, and after that there's only another five minutes of wrap-up prayers.They spend twice that amount of time trapped in the crush of atonement-weary Jews who have gone back to caring more about their possessions than all the terrible things they've done over the past year. When Andy and the boys reach daylight, there is already an anaconda-like line of cars trying to escape the temple parking lot. "By the time we get to Carl's, it might actually _be_ sundown," Andy says.

"It's, like, three blocks," Silas says. "We can walk." He doesn't add that that's what his dad always did. Andy's amazing powers of deduction have made that leap of reasoning.

They cross the parking lot, three men in dark suits. The midday sunshine will boil them alive, G-d's little punishment for seeking cheeseburgers before sundown. Shane still has his yarmulke on. They get to the point where they're going to have to cross the anaconda line of escaping cars. Right there, waiting to turn left if she ever reaches Ponderosa Drive, is Sexy Serious Woman. She smiles at Andy, a little more broadly than before, and she waves in a way that communicates that she is going to let them cross in front of her car. Andy lingers for a moment, trying to convey even more information than that in the smile he returns. He wants her to know that he really does find her attractive, that he really does want to give her his phone number, but that he saw in the way she atoned that she will want things from him that he can't provide, and he'd rather not start something when he already knows how much he will hurt her when it ends. 

It is absurdly sunny out. Andy takes off his suit jacket and carries it under his arm. The boys see what he's done, and they take theirs off, too. Shane notices his yarmulke and stuffs it into the pocket of his slacks. Andy feels exposed: walking in Southern California is such an aberration. When they cross streets, the drivers seem confused, like they know they're supposed to yield to pedestrians but aren't sure how to do it. They pass a sprawling beige condo complex, a Lutheran church, a Washington Mutual Bank. Andy's lived here for six months and driven down this street several dozen times, but he had no idea that any of this stuff was here.

Carl's Jr. is in one of those gigantic corner shopping centers that seem to be part of Southern California's native flora. It's a square that folds in on itself, with its chain restaurants like islands nestled in the folds. The other islands are a Rubio's and an Olive Garden, but there is no discussion of those options. It is Yom Kippur, and therefore there will be cheeseburgers. 

They get their food and sit down. "It's weird," Silas says. "I never get strawberry milkshakes, except on Yom Kippur. And I always think, I like strawberry milkshakes. Why don't I have more of them? And then I forget for the rest of the year."

"I think that's the whole point," Shane says through a mouth full of fries.

Andy is too busy eating to ask what Shane means, or to cut him down for being cryptic. But he feels like he doesn't need to, because Shane is being perfectly clear. That's been happening a lot today. He wants to blame it on the holiday, but he thinks it's something that happens more often than they realize, in this family. They're that kind of people, and he's one of them.


End file.
